I am convinced that many priests know the nature of what they are saying. They just believe that lesser mortals can only understand the basic scripts. The forms are important even if the content is crazy.

And, lo, Beantor did send his only son, Legume, to share Beantor’s love. And yet he was cast upon the stove by his enemies, into a pot filled with water, andouille sausages, onions, spices, and other, non-holy beans, there to simmer several hours until tender. He was then served over a bed of rice, thus demonstrating how much he cares for us.

@4 kayden: Hilarious. But can’t say that Christianity is as complicated as all that.

Nonsense. The bible has a whole book full of canon crazy, plus many other books that were considered too crazy to make the cut. And some of the stuff that isn’t in the book is the craziest.

Case in point: The celebration of Easter. It supposedly commemorates the day Jesus came back from the dead (and if you read the Bible, apparently there was also a mass rising of other dead people at the same time). And so nowadays, Christians celebrate this resurrection by pretending a pink rabbit goes around hiding eggs (presumably not its own eggs, but it’s not clear), and it’s now their job to find and eat these eggs. And these aren’t normal eggs, either. People spend a lot of time and effort painting up these eggs before hiding them (presumably so they can pretend these eggs are naturally this colorful… or perhaps it’s the rabbit who’s coloring them?).

And then, once all the eggs are found, they may be eaten. And thus do Christians celebrate the resurrection of their savior. Amen.

It doesn’t matter how silly it sounds, religion will never die. Preachers stay with it because it’s an easy way to make money. The mugs in the pews stay with it because they can use god as an excuse when they make a bad life decision: It’s not my fault, it’s god’s will.

With payoffs like that, religion will remain popular for a few more thousand years, I’m sure.

Actually I suspect that many people involved in religion have the idea gnawing at the back of their minds that what they are espousing is nonsense. I’ve seen enough stories about people who really don’t believe in the dictates of their religion, but who go along with it for one reason or another such as social pressure, unwillingness to admit that their previous work was in vain, the thought that you have to indoctrinate the masses to prevent them from acting in antisocial ways, etc. It’s rare, and it happens much more often in science that someone admits that their ideas are wrong, but occasionally it does happen.

Rarely one sees a Witch-Doctor who comes to his senses.
Not often, as there is little to motivate them to do so and much to keep them from becoming rational. The last bit of it is the time honored “what will become of me if . . . ”
I wish I could answer that one.